Author: David

Today, Brits will go to the polls to elect their next government. Will it be a landslide victory for Labour (liberal) as most everyone predicts or will the Tories (conservatives) rise up from the dead and, like the ailing-but-still-alive Monty Python character from 1975’s Holy Grail who protests being thrown out with the dead, shout “I’m not dead!” Perhaps the upstart Reform party will make their mark as a force to be reckoned with in future elections. Yet, after the dust has settled at the polling stations, will it even matter? 

Elections come and go and somehow it seems that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Or do they? Following on the heels of this election and the US election in November, Saturn’s dance with the North node in January and its debilitation several months later combined with stronger than usual solar activity points to a period of global instability and disturbance. Is this saying that no matter who gets in, the world is in trouble?

As an astrologer, I regard the approaching storm as a “done deal”, a fait accompli, if you will, simply because steering challenging planetary alignments towards a greater good requires a higher consciousness free from fear, hate, greed, pride and all the other human foibles that arise from the pain of separation, the primal wound. Do any of you trust the world’s leadership to make choices that are truly for the benefit of all? What about the world’s populations? Will we vote from a place untouched by our own conditioned mind?

Since time immemorial, exalted beings like Jesus, Buddha, and myriad other great ones have walked this earth and though they have offered solace to the weak and weary, their presence seems to have done little to stem the tide of hate and aggression which has plagued every known period of human history. Does this mean we throw up our hands in apathy as many of us already do and sigh, “What’s the point?” Does not the Game of Life still ask us to play the game to the best of our ability? 

What does this say about the coming elections in the UK and USA?

It seems we are between a rock and a hard place: simply voting from familial and social conditioning as most do will empower the forces of ignorance and inflame an already increasingly chaotic world. Our vote matters, but, as with everything else in life, only if we vote consciously. Too often we lead with our emotions and fail to see that, as Sadhguru suggested before the 2020 presidential election, “Don’t vote for the good man; vote for the capable one.”

Life is always more than what we see and it’s our duty to find out.

This month’s question comes from India: Is suffering a necessary part of life? Must we suffer in order to learn our lesson and grow?

A well-known astrologer friend once said to me, “Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.” What he meant is that though life invariably has pain, whether we suffer that pain is up to us. Suffering is always a product of identification with the body or mind. Identify with your unlimited nature, and suffering is no more.

However, the questioner here is alluding to those emotionally painful situations when it was our own actions that lead to suffering. Often we hear from someone, “I needed to go through this in order to learn such and such…” as if given their state of mind at the time, there was not even a snowflake’s chance in the desert they could have chosen a different path. This is just a clever way to avoid responsibility.

Suffering is self-inflicted. In an attempt to escape the primal wound of being separated from God and all its transmutations, we leap unconsciously into the lap of hope and desire only to fall into the abyss of suffering. Blind leaps are made with blind faith, and only darkness and despair shall they find.

As spiritual seekers, we must ask ourself if we are a pack animal that needs to be beat into submission by Life in order to move forward, or are we a human being who can objectively examine the motivations and intentions behind our actions? To say we were simply lost in the moment ensures that such ‘forgetfulness’ will happen again.

Suffering is not necessary in order to learn that which we need to learn. All we need is an awareness of why we are about to do what it is we are about to do. This in itself can save us countless days and nights of untold suffering. In order to have this kind of awareness, we cultivate each day virtues like vigilance, equipoise, and a commitment to dharma, living a life true to our nature.

Living a life true to our nature is the solution to every problem and issue. Our true nature is a direct link to God. It is the ‘divine plan’ emblazoned within us at the moment of creation and when we are aligned with this plan, though pain is still a possibility through the body, suffering is not.

Suffering is a result of deviating from our authenticity. We deviate because of past wounds that masks our true nature and makes us believe fulfilment lies elsewhere in the objects of our fantasies and imagination. Simply familiarising yourself with how these wounds manifest in your life will help tremendously in navigating the waters of desire which become shark-infested with compulsions, obsessions, fears, and all the other modifications of the mind that bring misery.

“The unexamined life is not worth living” is a famous quote attributed to Socrates. I always tell my clients: never regret the choices you made in the past, but closely examine the trials and tribulations that brought you to your knees: you will likely realise how choices better attuned to your true nature would have averted the situations that caused you to suffer. This is good; this is learning from your mistakes. Only a stupid person or one who fails to contemplate their life experiences repeats the same thing while expecting different results… .

Taking Socrates’s cue, if we consider thoughtfully why it is we make choices that lead to suffering, we will discover a multitude of deeply buried pain and hurts that caused us to believe something about ourself that was not true. This caused us to initiate or undertake actions that ultimately proved detrimental to our joy and peace of mind.

The whole premise of astrology is that we can avoid much suffering simply by being aware of the tendencies of the mind. Indeed, I have known many people who averted suffering during particularly vulnerable periods by simply being vigilant to the tendencies which could drag them into challenging dramas and painful circumstances.

If you would like a Vedic astrological consultation that alerts you to the pains and hurts specific to you, visit this link.